Friday, December 10, 2010

Comptroller rolls out recommendations for State's schools

That's Susan, top right, I'm sure proud of that gal, I reckon

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs has come out with a few recommendations to help straighten out the State's budget for it's educational system. One of the recommendations, as reported by the Laredo Morning Times is to reduce the ratio of "Teachers to Administrators"? Shouldn't it be "reduce the ratio of Administrators to Teachers"? In other words, you might want to get rid of some administrators but not teachers. You would think that'd be the right thing to do.
Not so fast, another recommendation of Combs is to eliminate the rule that says that no more than 22 students can be assigned to any classroom from Pre-K to 5th grade. Instead, she says that there should be "an average" of 22 per classroom. This is where the bad news for teachers gets worse. Not only will some teachers end up having more than 22 students (some having less), but this new approach will allow for 12,000 teaching jobs across the state to be eliminated. This is by Combs' own estimate, although it does not appear in this particular LMT article. So, for teachers in particular, this is a loose-loose situation. I'm thinking it's probably going to be loose-loose for the students as well.